The Truth About Sports Balls

Brandon Sun “Small
World” Column, Sunday, March 9/08Zack
Gross

As
Fair Trade Manitoba’s One Month Challenge winds down, it can be
said that a growing trend in local consumerism is ethical
purchasing.

Compared to just a few years ago, the number of commercial outlets
carrying fair trade food products has increased significantly, with the
likes of Safeway, Sobey’s, Co-op and Superstore joining the
small, green businesses and non-profits that have pioneered fair trade
over the past twenty years. Beyond foods, such as coffee, tea,
sugar, dried fruit, chocolate and so on, the private sector is now
looking at increasing its market share of other items, potentially one
of the biggest being sports balls.

Ten years ago, the world media picked up on the fact that large
corporations, such as Nike and Reebok, were using kids to stitch
together soccer balls for about 60 cents a day. The standard
soccer ball, the vast majority of which are manufactured in Pakistan,
was made of leather and needed 690 hand stitches. Child below
fourteen years of age and even as young as eight, due to the abject
poverty of their families, were forced to do this work, rather than
being able to attend school and, thus, had no way out of the cycle of
poverty and human rights abuses they suffered.

Corporations realized that they had both public relations and
profit-making dilemmas on their hands. First of all, they floated
the argument that “it has ever been thus” but that
didn’t wash with activists and regulators. The next step
was to disclaim that they could do anything about the situation, that
they couldn’t control what factories did and were unaware when
abuses took place. The argument that was made against that
assertion was that companies had the financial power and the moral duty
to impose and police regulations on their branch plants.

Companies, whose actions have been characterized as “foot
dragging, deliberate confusion and no strong leadership” by
industry critics, then moved some of their operations to countries such
as India and China, but those who followed their trade to these new
locations found the same abuses.

Indeed, it was revealed that some balls that were labeled
“ethical purchase” weren’t actually “fair
trade”, that is they met some minimal requirement but were not
certified by an independent third party. In one case, a factory,
which labeled its product “No Child Labour”, had adult
workers stitching balls in their own homes, knowing that the whole
family would need to do it full-time in order to make a living.

FoulBall USA, a sports ball watchdog, reports that, even after ten
years of advocacy, at least twenty percent of balls imported into North
America are still a product of child labour. Advocates are
focusing on major sports events, such as the Olympics and other elite
regional games, hoping to use those forums to push the “no
sweat” and “no child labour” campaigns.
Olympic-wear for the public and athlete uniforms have not met these
standards in the past.

In very recent years, organizations such as the YMCA and Transfair
Canada have worked to import fair trade sports balls into Canada.
Fair trade regulations ensure that adult workers are paid a fair wage
and work in safe and clean conditions. The balls are made of
polyurethane artificial leather, easier and cleaner to work with.
Y Focus and Service Clubs often connect sale and use of these balls
with a “fair trade premium,”
that is selling them for an extra 20% which goes into community
development projects, or distributing and using the balls at
recreational fundraising events. The company Talon Sports has
been a corporate leader in producing fair trade sports equipment.

FIFA, the International Federation of Football Associations, world
soccer’s governing body and therefore, arguably, having one of
the largest audiences in the world, reached a deal with companies to
move away from using child labour to produce their soccer balls back in
2000. Along with fair trade soccer balls, North American style
footballs, basketballs, volleyballs and rugby balls are also now
available.

More and more commercial outlets are carrying these and they can
occasionally be found not just in the smaller outlets, but at Canadian
Tire and other chain stores.

It seems absurd that people would want to eat food, wear clothes or use
equipment that has been made in slavery conditions. One might
expect that we would be put off such products, and the truth is that
once the public is made aware of human rights abuses, they do vote with
their consumer dollars.

Publicity about child labour in sports balls has brought about real
change over a relatively short period of time, just as the movie Blood
Diamond caused jewelry shoppers to look for alternatives, which of
course caused merchants to do the same.

The old saying is that the truth shall set us free and, sometimes too
slowly, the truth is setting free children around the world working in
factory and fields, in terrible conditions for little or no pay.
We need to keep spreading the word and applying pressure.

Zack Gross is
program
coordinator at the Manitoba Council for International Cooperation
(MCIC), a coalition of 36 international development organizations
active in our province.